4/3/2019

Every Japanese emperor gets his own imperial era name, one of the perks of the job, and it was announced this week to great fanfare that the era to take effect when the new emperor is enthroned on May 1 will be named Reiwa.  Thus, the remainder of 2019 will be known in Japan as Reiwa 1, and succeeding years will follow in kind until the next emperor takes over. The present era, Heisei, will finish its 31-year run when the current emperor, Akihito, abdicates on April 30. He will be known in future textbooks as Emperor Heisei.

The name, composed of two Chinese characters, was created by a special government-appointed panel of experts based on poetry and history. The panel came up with six candidates, from which the Cabinet chose the winning entry. Reiwa comes from a poem composed at a plum-viewing party in the year 730 AD.

Much was made of the fact that Reiwa is the first of the 248 historic era names in a history dating to 645 AD to have been selected from a Japanese rather than a Chinese source. However, the panel offered a nice balance of both in its six options, and the chosen name, especially the atypical usage of the first character, in any case has its roots in Chinese poetry, as does most Japanese poetry at the time (a fact that the Chinese media have not failed to note). There was much speculation that the government would choose one of the characters (安) in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s name, but that character was wisely not included in any of the panel’s offerings — which, though scheduled to be sealed for 30 years, were mysteriously leaked to the media the next day. One nice result of the final choice is that the unexpected name has sparked renewed interest (and sales) in the ancient poetry collection, the Manyoshu, that served as its inspiration.

There was some talk that the unprecedented use of an indigenous source reflected Abe’s desire to appeal to his conservative support base. But it’s fair to say that the imaginative name has been broadly welcomed by the public at large for its lyrical ring, and the month-long heads up — new era names are normally not announced until after the emperor has died — has truly given rise to a sense of excitement, of a new age at hand.

Unfortunately that wouldn’t be true for anyone reading CNN, which is trying its best to find the cloud in the silver lining. It wants badly to see Abe as Trump and the Reiwa name as Mein Kampf.  So what’s in a name, according to CNN? Here are some tidbits from a CNN article on April 1 entitled “‘Reiwa’: Japan announces dawn of a new era”, and the same points from a different perspective as they might have been written by, well, just about anyone else.

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CNN: The ‘wa’ character in Reiwa is the same used for wartime ruler Emperor Showa and may thus help “promote a more positive narrative of Japan’s wartime past”.

Not-CNN: This will mark the 20th time that the ‘wa’ character has been used for Japan’s era names over the past 1,374 years, more than all but four other characters in the language. It was one of the first recorded era characters, dating from 708. (‘Rei’ is being used for the first time.) ‘Wa’ means peace or harmony, consistent with the government’s efforts to promote the peaceful conditions that underlay the nation’s postwar prosperity.

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CNN: The choice of a Japanese text is “clearly a dog whistle to [the prime minister’s] conservative constituency.”

Not-CNN: The Manyoshu is a sweeping anthology of poems taken from all social classes from the emperor to common farmers, a contrast with the elitist scholarly Chinese classics that have dominated in the past. This choice is clearly an attempt to appeal to the broad Japanese public ahead of the Upper House election this summer (a Yomiuri Shimbun survey of the general public found that 88% approved of using a Japanese source). That said, the text is suspiciously similar to a poem in the Chinese classic Wen Xuan (Selections of Chinese Literature), one of the top three sources of era names to now.

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CNN: “The Showa era…spanned the rise of Japanese fascism and nationalism, when imperial troops under the Rising Sun banner invaded numerous neighboring countries. This attitude is sometimes called Showa Nationalism.”

Not-CNN: The Showa era spanned the rise and decisive downfall of Japanese fascism and the nation’s slow, difficult, determined comeback from deprivation and despair to peace and prosperity. This is sometimes called Showa Pacifism.

You get the idea. This is beyond dumb. The writers may want to sound profound, but they’ve evidently chosen their politics first and twisted the situation to match. That may work for US audiences (though that’s not what the network’s sinking ratings suggest), but it’s just tiresome here. CNN, please go home. Sometimes a name is just a name.